Edinburgh international film festival, Madonna's latest movie and East End etiquette

Sir Patrick Stewart heads the jury at Edinburgh this year, with some strong British films in contention. Meanwhile, Madonna is to make a second foray into direction and lost gem Bronco Bullfrog is restored to its full youthful East End glory. By Jason Solomons

Sir Patrick Stewart is heading the jury at the 64th Edinburgh international film festival. Photograph: Terry Harris/Rex Features

Tartan up the juries

Sir Patrick Stewart - we do not yet know if he will insist on using the full, grand title - is to head the Jury at the 64th Edinburgh international film festival. The actor, who can legitimately be called "Mr President" for the duration of the event, will sit in judgment over the prestigious Michael Powell award, given to the best British film at the festival. Competitors include: Paul Andrew Williams's
Cherry Tree Lane (his searing debut London to Brighton premiered at the festival in 2006); Nick Moran's
The Kid;
Huge, the directing debut of comic actor Ben Miller; and
Soulboy, a dramatic story set around the Wigan Casino's 1970s northern soul scene, directed by Shimmy Marcus and starring Martin Compston.
Mr Nice, with drug runner Howard Marks embodied by Rhys Ifans, and Nick Whitfield's film
Skeletons, featuring Jason Isaacs, are also up for the trophy. Meanwhile, making good use of its star attendees, Edinburgh has asked Ben Miller and Jason Isaacs to judge the best international feature. Their co-juror is Lynda Myles, former artistic director of EIFF who, incidentally, features in a cameo role in the film
Long Shot, an on-the-hoof doc about film-making,shot at Edinburgh in 1977 and getting a rare airing as part of this year's retrospective of post-new wave British films.

Madonna's no virgin

Surely the only way is up for Madonna the film-maker? Mercifully, she isn't starring in her second attempt to direct and it looks like being a thoroughly professional affair.
WE begins a 10-week shoot in London, New York and the south of France next month, telling the story of a young woman in modern-day New York (Abbie Cornish) who becomes obsessed with the 1930s love story between Wallis Simpson (Andrea Riseborough) and King Edward VII (he'll be played by James D'Arcy, not, as many previously thought, Ewan McGregorcorrect). The film, flitting between two love stories in a
Julie & Julia sort of a way, will also star Oscar Isaac, currently on our screens as venal King John in Ridley Scott's
Robin Hood. It will be shot by
The Lives of Others cinematographer Hagen Bogdanski and Oscar nominee Arianne Phillips, who also styled Madonna's concert tours, is in charge of costumes.

Bronco's back

Lost London film
Bronco Bullfrog , featuring teenage actors from Joan Littlewood's Stratford workshops, has been digitally restored. It looked pristine when it premiered at Bfi Southbank ahead of a nationwide re-release for the first time in 40 years. The film, a favourite of Paul Weller for its youthful sense of rebellion and its mod soundtrack by Audience, was nearly lost for ever in the 80s, when the negative was dumped in a skip but, somehow, it survives. Its director Barney Platts-Mills showed me snaps of the 1970 premiere in Mile End, when Princess Anne bravely ventured down to the East End. Actor Sam Shepherd is kissing her hand security guard looks on. "What you don't see in the pictures," Sam's mate and co-star Roy Haywood tells me, "is that her muscle bundled Sam into a cupboard straight after and told him if he ever pulled a stunt like that again, he'd be finished. You don't kiss the hand of royalty - that's what I learned from
Bronco Bullfrog."